Yolanda of Flanders


Yolanda of Flanders, Marchioness of Namur was Empress of the Latin Empire in Constantinople in her own right from 1216 to 1219 and from 1217 as a sole ruler, after her spouse Peter II of Courtenay was captured and imprisoned before he could reach Constantinople. She was ruling Marchioness of Namur from 1212 until 1219.

Biography

Yolanda was the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainault, and Countess Margaret I of Flanders. Two of her brothers, Baldwin I and then Henry, were emperors in Constantinople.
In 1212, Yolanda became Marchioness of Namur after her brother, Marquis Philip I.
After the death of her brother emperor Henry in 1216 there was a brief period without an emperor, before Peter was elected to succeed her brother. On their way there, Peter sent Yolanda ahead to Constantinople, while he fought the Despotate of Epirus, during which he was captured. Because his fate was unknown, Yolanda governed Constantinople as a sole ruler for two years.
She allied with the Bulgarians against the various Byzantine successor states, and was able to make peace with Theodore I Lascaris of the Empire of Nicaea, who married her daughter. However, she soon died, in 1219.

Legacy

Following Yolanda's death, her second son, Robert of Courtenay, became emperor because her oldest son, Philip, did not want the throne. As Robert was still in France at the time, there was technically no emperor until he arrived in 1221.
Yolanda was, in her own right, Marchioness of Namur, which she inherited from her brother, Marquis Philip I, in 1212 and left to her eldest son, Marquis Philip II, when she went to Constantinople in 1216.

Issue

By Peter of Courtenay she had 10 children: